It’s human connection, stupid
You're not stupid, in fact you are real clever ‘cos you are here reading this.
We are riffing off the ol’ “it’s the economy stupid” that gets thrown around every election cycle to explain why people vote the way they vote.
In much the same way, when businesses try and diagnose what's ‘going on internally’ as they face problems or blockers or issues in getting stuff done, we think you could boil it all down to - “it’s human connection stupid”.
Get ready, cos I’m about to justify that 👆 by saying a super complex thing from the world of academic study on ‘groupness’ in a brutal, broad and over simplistic way (and probs miss a whole bunch that is important… soz academic friends):
All work that involves more than one person is some form of collaboration
When we collaborate on anything we are sharing ideas
When we share ideas, we need to communicate across consciousness
As consciousness is subjective, individuals have a host of different cultural, language and cognitive parameters
These differences in ‘consciousness settings’ must be navigated in order to share ideas with accuracy and therefore ‘collaborate good’
Authentic interpersonal human connection is the means by which these subjective differences are navigated by two humans who know each other ‘good enough’ to collaborate together.
Or, to say it like a ‘normal non academic person’ would say:
“You can’t trust someone you don’t know and functional teams are built on a foundation of trust. Therefore to build a team that ‘works’ you need authentic human connection.” (a quote from Georgina Robilliard, simplifying the complex academic thoughts about human consciousness of Stefan Bramble into 2 sentences).
So, it’s super important and we are going to guess that you get that (cos you are reading this and smart people read this blog)
BUT…
We are in a crisis of connection.
We think it had something to do with a whole bunch of workplaces moving online real quickly and with no prep.
We DO NOT believe the answer is just to go back to the office. We think this crisis of connection is just as bad at the office, but is masked better there*.
We believe that authentic human connection is not only possible online, but in some senses better supported by an online environment**.
So, how do you know if human connection might need some love in your org?
We at Playgrounded Co have been fan-girl-ing Patrick Lencionis’ ‘Five dysfunctions of a team’ (go here for all their stuff), and think their framing is super useful for this. Are you seeing:
An absence of trust?
A fear of conflict?
A lack of commitment?
An avoidance of accountability?
Inattention to results?
If these things 👆 are showing up on the daily, you might need to ask yourself:
“Do we need to focus on developing the human connection within our organisation?”
Great, but how do we do that👆?
There is of course no one way to do this work, but here are three things we have seen increase human connection within an organisation that helps with the attainment of tasks.
But first, a wee caveat: when you develop human connection in your org it MUST be in order to help you do the work. You as a leader will have to state this overtly as you go about the work. This is important as it not only helps to get buy-in with your people, but creates the appropriate boundary to the work. When those to things are in place, magic can happen 🤌.
So, here the three things that we think can help:
Share stories that relate to why you all do what you do. Human relationships are built on narratives that we share. We can either go in a time machine create lived narratives together, OR we can share narratives about our lives in order to share context about who we are. A great way to do this is to get people to talk times they have really enjoyed doing something and get them to relate that to what they do on the daily in their job.
Make an all-hands where you people can be real humans with each other. Yes an all-hands is a costly meeting, but don’t fall for the trap of trying to ‘do work’ in these meetings because of it. All hands biggest utility is creating a sense of the group and helping people to care about the community they are a part of. Therefore the main job is getting people to feel like a)they want to be there and b) they like the other people they are there with. For sure connect it to your company mission, but know that you must find the joy of getting people together. Think of it like a village square that you and your leadership must build together, and then put an event on in that square that people want to attend.
Reflect with your team about moment of connection. We say this all the time, but if you want humans to grow in a capacity, all you have to do is get them to become conscious of the moments when they demonstrated that skill. Regular reflection with individuals and their group about the state of the connection amongst the team and what it felt like to be connected (or not) will help them identify and develop their connection naturally and with authenticity.
So, that’s our rant about connection and how you can build it in your teams.
But, as we have said before, none of this can happen, unless you do it first. After all, leadership just means going first.
SO, what are you going to do today to build and develop your connection to the humans you work with?
*Big statement, yeh?!? Reach out if you wanna hear more rant about that, we have much to say, but could not fit it here
**Same as above👆
